When I wrote in these pages about how I'd wasted months and far too much money in a fruitless quest for the perfect home espresso, the feedback I received was overwhelming. Coffee obsessives from all over the world sent advice and, after following their suggestions, I started pulling some really quite adequate espressos.

So when my machine recently melted down in the chromed equivalent of a teenage sulk, I was bereft. How could I make a decent coffee without an espresso machine?

I have spent weeks trying and perfecting other methods, including one for brewing "cowboy coffee" which was tweeted to me by a Texan caffeine addict and involves using a bandana as a filter. And I've learned that there are good cups of coffee to be had without the huge investment in a temperamental, steam-spitting appliance. Here are my top four methods - a couple of established stalwarts and two new discoveries.

Cafetiere

All coffee brewing systems work by passing water through coffee grounds. The big difference is the pressure they can exert. An espresso machine does this at nine times atmospheric pressure, while the cafetiere, that fixture of the middle class dinner party table, does it with the pressure of the host's forearm.

You can get a great cup of coffee from one of these but you need to follow a few ground rules. The water should be little short of boiling and the coffee should be less finely ground than espresso or it will clog the filter mesh. The steeping grounds should be stirred immediately before the plunger is used, and if you find yourself having to fight to get the knob pushed all the way down, stop. Pushing against a clogged mesh can make the edges of the plunger deform and shoot boiling coffee up your arm - it's hard to do that and still look insouciant while handing round the Elizabeth Shaw Mint Crisps.

The cafetiere can't extract as much oily loveliness from the grounds as an espresso machine so its coffee is better drunk long, with milk. However, using more than the recommended "one scoop of coffee per person and one for the pot" will give you a stronger and better-flavoured cup.

Moka pot (caffetiera)

The familiar aluminium Moka pot - half-Dalek, half-Italian Futurist sculpture - is almost unchanged since Alfonso Bialetti designed it in 1933.

After filling the bottom half with water and the central basket with grounds, it is heated on the stove. The enclosed bottom half acts like a pressure cooker, raising the temperature of the water several degrees above boiling so it extracts far more caffeine as it blows through the grounds with that burbling sound.

Real aficionados know to pull it off the heat when it's only halfway through its gurgling cycle and the truly obsessed (OK, me) can purchase a small weight that sits on top of the delivery tube inside the pot, increasing the pressure-cooker effect and producing an almost correct crema - that slick foam that coats the surface of a freshly-made espresso. Purists say that a Moka pot can't produce a proper espresso but served with hot UHT milk (its sweetness compensates for the slightly burnt taste the high temperatures give the coffee), in a cornflake bowl with a pain aux chocolat to dip in, it tastes so much like being on a French holiday that it has an authenticity all of its own.

Syphon pots

Syphon pot coffee makers were briefly popular in the 50s and 60s. They looked like a school physics experiment involving two spherical glass flasks and a spirit lamp, but they make the very best jug coffee (as opposed to strong shots produced under pressure). The bottom globe is half-filled with water and the top is dosed with ground coffee. As the spirit lamp heats the water the air above it expands, pushing the hot water up through a central tube and over the grounds. Once the top globe is full of coffee, the heat source is removed and the cooling air in the bottom chamber sucks the liquid back, under pressure, filtering it through a plug of its own grounds.

It's fiendishly clever, strangely fascinating to watch and produces coffee of an entirely different character to the previous two; a gentler and more subtle brew. For this reason, these retro machines are fiercely competed for on eBay with ridiculous prices (I've seen up to £200) being paid for original boxed versions, which is a little unnecessary because they're still made to the original specification by the company in Surrey that invented them in 1910.

The syphon pot is a thing of beauty. It's the gentlest way to make sensitive brews of costly single-estate coffee for considered appreciation amongst aficionados. For me, however, it hasn't the necessary raw caffeine power for my morning jolt.

Handpresso

A beautifully engineered gadget that marries the bicycle pump with the filter mechanism of an espresso machine for a truly portable shot. The ads, of course, show tanned and lithe French couples knocking out perfect demitasses on the deck of their yacht, but could it work for a groggy Englishman standing in a Camden kitchen in his pants? Amazingly, yes. Even the shakiest hands can drop in one of the convenient ESE pods - the European standard coffee equivalent of the teabag - top up the reservoir from the kettle and pump ferociously. When the tiny pressure gauge in the handle reaches 16 bar (16 x atmospheric pressure), you line it up with your cup and push the button.

About this article

Tim Hayward finds out if he can make a perfect cup of coffee without his prized machine

This article appeared on p18 of the G2 section of the Guardian
on Tuesday 28 April 2009.
It was published on
the Guardian website
at 19.01 EDT on Tuesday 28 April 2009.
It was last modified at 07.38 EDT on Wednesday 29 April 2009.
It was first published at 19.37 EDT on Tuesday 28 April 2009.